Awarded in 2006
Home Department: Bioengineering
Faculty Advisor: Stephen Quake (Bioengineering)

Research Description: Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a powerful assay used to probe DNA–protein interactions. Traditional methods of implementing this assay are cumbersome and require a large number of cells, making it difficult to study rare cancer and stem cells. The Quake lab had designed a microfluidic device (named AutoChIP) to perform sensitive ChIP analysis on low cell numbers in a rapid, automated fashion while preserving the specificity of the assay. The demonstrated AutoChIP results from 2,000 cells were comparable to conventional ChIP methods using 50,000–500,000 cells. Angela used this device to study oncogene addiction in cancer cells and to do profiling of cancer stem cells. She believed that their device provides a solution to the need for a high sensitivity, rapid, and automated ChIP assay, and in doing so, will change the way we study cancer and enable studies of cancer stem cells that were not possible previously.

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Angela is an Associate Professor in the Division of Life Science and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).